iPhone/iPad iOS music making app round-up: Week 8

Synths, sequencers and more

What's new in the App Store?

With the announcements of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and Blackberry’s PlayBook, it’s clear that Apple isn’t going to have things all its own way in the tablet market. However, other platforms will have to go some to match the iPad when it comes to music making apps.

We’ve got five more here, three of which will also run on the iPhone and iPod touch.

greySox Finger Stomp, £2.39

Compatibility: iPad (requires iOS 3.2 or later)

This curious beat making app enables you to generate music by tapping animated ‘street’ objects such as basketballs, whistles, tyres, cans and horns. These can be dragged around the interface, and their sounds can be tuned. 12 pre-recorded beats are included to get you started.

Sound Trends studio.HD, £4.99

Compatibility: iPad (requires iOS 3.2 or later)

From the makers of Looptastic comes this more traditional music production app. It gives you eight multi-layered audio tracks (which equates to 24 tracks of playback in total), recording, editing and mixing features, effects and a library of loops. If you want an on-the-go tool for capturing your ideas, this could be it.

Extremely Nice Apps LoopXtreme, £3.99

Billed as “the complete music creation and editing tool for iPhone and iPod touch,” LoopXtreme gives you 15 pads with which you can trigger hits and loops. The parameters of each pad are individually adjustable, and songs can be built up using the Pattern Editor.

Tempo Rubato nLog MIDI Synth, £5.49

This extended version of the original NLog Synth offers support for Line 6’s MIDI Mobilizer, meaning that it can now be played from your MIDI keyboard/controller (a new synth engine facilitates “polyphonic real-time response”). Tempo Rubato also says that support for Akai’s Synthstation (and other products) will be added as they become available.

mifki SoundGrid, £1.79

Inspired by Yamaha’s Tenori-on, this recently updated matrix sequencer comes with various sounds and enables you to add more for free. You can also create instruments from your own samples, and songs can be built by playing patterns one after the other. Effects are supplied, as is the option to export your songs to SoundCloud from the app.